Overview

A description of the theoretical notion of "life effectiveness" as a set of generic, learnable life skills.

Two research studies are then presented:

Testing and further development of the Life Effectiveness Questionnaire as a practical tool for measuring the effects of personal development intervention programs and recommends an 8-factor, 24-item instrument (LEQ-H) on the basis of a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

A large, longitudinal, empirical study of the effects of outdoor education programs (mostly Outward Bound) on ~ 3,000 participants self-reported life effectiveness (the largest outdoor education study of its kind). The main results were that:

Outdoor education programs were found to have moderately positive effects on five of the measured life effectiveness skills and small-moderate positive effects on the other three measured skills.

There was some dissipation of the positive effects in the longer-term (~ 3 to 12 months later).

'Longer, more intense programs (approx. 3 to 4 weeks) with young adults were the most impactful (compared to shorter (approx. 6 to 10 day) programs for school students, families, corporate, and special (e.g., disability) programs). Variables such as participant's gender, age, group gender, and group size did not predict variance in the outcomes.